Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference focuses on developers. Most of this week’s announcements covered software and the ways in which both developers and Apple can improve the user experience of Apple’s devices—from the Mac to the iPhone to the iPad to the Apple Watch. No new hardware appeared, but the upcoming software releases should make the company’s devices faster and easier to use. We won’t go over all the nitty-gritty developer details. Instead, here are the announcements that will make a difference to most people.

Apple Watch: faster apps with watchOS 2

WatchOS 2 will bring new features, but also native third-party apps with much better performance.

It’s been just six weeks since the Apple Watch debuted to the public, but Apple has already announced watchOS 2, which will be available as a free update to the device this fall. Among a slew of new features, watchOS 2 will allow third-party developers to create native apps for the Apple Watch, translating to a faster and more seamless app experience.

As we mentioned in our initial write-up on the Apple Watch, third-party apps have thus far been largely disappointing, mainly because of poor performance. Apple Watch apps are currently extensions of counterparts on your iPhone, and must communicate with the phone versions to get data and perform other tasks. The result is that you’re often left waiting for apps to launch or to retrieve and display data. Under watchOS 2, developers will be able to create native apps that run directly—and, in some cases, wholly—on the watch itself. These apps will even be able to access the Internet directly via Wi-Fi. The result should be apps that launch faster, load data faster, perform tasks faster, and work even when your phone isn’t nearby.

In watchOS 2, third-party apps will have greater access to the Watch’s hardware, as well as direct access to HealthKit and HomeKit features.

Third-party apps will also gain access to more of the Watch’s hardware features, such as the microphone, speaker, accelerometer, Digital Crown, and Taptic Engine. They’ll be able to play video on the Watch’s screen; they’ll have access to Apple’s health features, including streaming heart-rate data; and they’ll be able to control home-automation products via Apple’s HomeKit system.

If these new apps work as promised, watchOS 2 will immediately make the Apple Watch more useful. A few third-party apps have impressed us, but more than anything, the current state of third-party apps has given us a glimpse of how useful they could be.

Apple will be tweaking its own apps, too. For example, the Maps app will include transit features, working with your iPhone to show you transit maps, information, and directions, much like the current Maps app for driving directions. And Siri will gain support for transit directions, HomeKit control, and direct access to your favorite Glances.

The new Apple Watch software will also add some interesting new watch faces, third-party complications (the bits of information you can customize your watch faces with), a new Nightstand mode that lets you use your watch as an alarm clock at night, and lots of little tweaks and improvements. And as with iOS 9, improvements to Apple Pay mean you’ll be able to add store-specific cards and rewards cards to the Wallet app (currently the Passbook app).

iOS 9: more intelligence, better productivity on your iPhone or iPad

iOS 9 will bring a number of convenience and productivity enhancements to both the iPhone and iPad.

Perhaps the most significant announcement of Apple’s keynote, given the number of people it will affect, is the next version of the company’s mobile operating system. iOS 9 will be released as a free update this fall and will be compatible with devices as far back as the iPhone 4s. Like Apple’s upcoming update to OS X, discussed below, iOS 9 will emphasize improving and extending “the foundation” of the software that runs on iPads and iPhones.

Apple says one of the big areas of improvement in iOS 9 will relate to “intelligence.” For example, Siri will better understand natural-language commands and context—say “Remind me about this when I get home” while you’re browsing a website or reading an email or text message, and Siri will automatically create a new location-based reminder incorporating that website, email, or text, respectively. (With a CarPlay-equipped car, Siri will apparently be able to create reminders based on when you get in your vehicle.) The software will also learn what you like to do at different times and in different contexts. For example, if you tend to browse your RSS feeds every morning at 7 a.m. when you wake up, iOS 9 will put your RSS reader’s icon on the lock screen at 7 a.m. for quick access.

As with OS X 10.11, the built-in Spotlight search in iOS 9 gets smarter, too, suggesting people, apps, nearby locations, and news based on what you’re currently doing and where you are; the feature will also make it easier to get sports scores and other things. Even better, Apple is offering developers a Spotlight API (application programming interface) that, with updated apps, will allow you to search for data within those apps and jump directly to search results within the apps.

Apple is finally bringing transit information back to the Maps apps with iOS 9.

Apple’s native Maps is finally getting transit directions (again), with transit-specific maps that include lines and station information (complete with the locations of specific exits and entrances), and Siri-based transit requests. Alas, transit support will be limited initially, with just 10 major US cities and a number of cities in China, but Apple said it will be rolling out support to more cities over time.

iPads and iPhones will also get a new app from Apple, News, that will incorporate news from thousands of major and minor publications into a single customizable, interactive feed of articles. You’ll be able to choose categories of news to follow, as well as perform topic searches and then subscribe to those search results, which will update on the fly, giving you a fresh batch of articles each time you use the app.

If you’ve done a lot of text editing in iOS, you know how frustrating it can be to use the loupe cursor-placement and text-selection feature. With iOS 9, you can instead position the cursor, and select text, by putting two fingers on the on-screen keyboard and using the screen as a trackpad. Similarly, that keyboard will include shortcuts for actions such as copy and paste, and, in Mail, for quickly accessing attachments.

Apple Pay is also getting some new features, such as the capability add store-specific cards and rewards cards to the Wallet app (currently the Passbook app).

Owners of the iPad Air 2 will be able to open two apps simultaneously in a new split-screen mode.

Although everyone should benefit from iOS 9’s new features, productivity-focused iPad users will be especially excited about the update, because it brings a number of long-requested features to Apple’s tablets—even if some of those features will require a recent iPad.

The biggest improvements relate to multitasking. Owners of the iPad Air 2—and only the iPad Air 2 and future iPad models, due to memory and processor requirements—will be able to open two apps simultaneously in a new split-screen mode. You’ll even be able to determine how much of the screen is dedicated to each app. At least one Android tablet has similar functionality, and people have been asking for it on an iPad for at least a couple of years, so it’s great to see that Apple add it.

Owners of the iPad Air, Air 2, mini 2, and mini 3 get a similar feature called Slide Over that lets you quickly view a secondary app by swiping from the right edge of the screen—a narrow view of the app slides in over the top of the current app, letting you use both at once. (In fact, on the iPad Air 2, you use Slide Over to initiate split-screen multitasking. Once you’re viewing an app using Slide Over, you pull that app farther onto the screen to “pull it off” the overlay and make it a part of the screen.) Those four iPad models also gain a nifty new picture-in-picture feature that lets you, for example, watch a video in a small overlay while working in Mail.

If you have an iPad Air 2 (or any future iPad model, we presume), you’ll be able to use Split View in iOS 9, allowing two apps to run side-by-side.

If you use an external keyboard with any iPad—not just recent ones—iOS 9 will help you discover keyboard shortcuts within apps by showing them on the screen, and will include a much-requested keyboard-based application switcher.

Of course, iOS 9 will also bring scores of little tweaks and improvements across the OS. Among them, the Notes app will gain list-making capabilities; HealthKit will be able to track more things (like reproductive cycles), CarPlay will support additional apps and screens, as well as wireless connectivity; HomeKit will let you control supported home-automation products; and a new low-power mode will extend battery life an additional three hours.

Finally, one of the most welcome changes, at least among people who struggled to upgrade their devices to iOS 8 last year because they didn’t have enough free space, is that Apple says iOS 9 will require only 1.3 GB of space for over-the-air upgrades, versus 4.6 GB for iOS 8.

OS X 10.11 El Capitan: a tuneup for the Mac

El Capitan is focussed on performance and stability improvements, rather than new features and interfaces.

Apple spent little time talking about the next version of its desktop operating system for Macs, OS X, but that’s because the company is pitching the update, to be called OS X 10.11 El Capitan, as one that focuses on performance and stability. (If you’re not familiar with Yosemite National Park, the namesake of the current version of OS X, El Capitan is one of the park’s landmark rock formations.) Much as OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was a “fine-tuning” of OS X 10.5 Leopard, OS X 10.11 El Capitan is largely a polishing of OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

Apple says that these improvements will be apparent in significant increases in performance across the OS and apps, along with greater stability. But the company also revealed a number of new features, most of them focused on productivity. For example, OS X’s full-screen mode, previously limited to a single app at a time, will allow you to view and use two apps simultaneously, so you’ll get the benefits of a larger work area while being able to work with two apps at once. And in Safari, you’ll be able to pin your favorite websites as icons in the tab bar and quickly find and stop tabs that are playing annoying video in the background.

In El Capitan, OS X’s full-screen mode will allow you to use two apps side by side.

In a welcome improvement, Spotlight will allow you to perform complex searches using natural language, rather than requiring you to use specific search syntax. So, for example, you’ll be able to say “What documents did I work on last week?”

A public beta of OS X El Capitan—that is, an early, incomplete version—will be available starting in July. (We do not recommend installing beta software on devices you rely on for work or your personal life, but if you feel like experimenting on a spare machine, have fun.) The official, final release of El Capitan will be available for free to Mac users this fall.

Apple Music: poised to dominate by default?

Apple will offer a free three-month trial of Apple Music starting on June 30.

Apple’s new Music service may very well end up being the streaming service you use if you own an iPhone, iPad, or Mac—mostly because Apple’s making it so easy to use. If you haven’t tried streaming yet and you own an Apple device, this will be your chance: Apple is giving everyone a free three-month trial starting on its June 30 launch date, which means that hundreds of millions of iTunes users will get their first taste of all-you-can-listen streaming. (AppleTV and Android support will follow in the fall.) After that, the service will cost $10 per month for one person, or just $15 per month for up to six family members—other plans give you only 50 percent off each additional family member, so this is basically buy two, get four more free.

Apple Music is also seamlessly integrated into the devices’ software in ways that third-party apps can’t be, and it will work to figure out what you want to hear. For example, you can say to Siri: “Play the song from Selma,” and it will infer that you want to listen to “Glory” by Common and John Legend, since that was the most popular song from the soundtrack.

Music Connect will let artists interact with fans through Apple Music.

Besides attractive group pricing and native support, Apple Music has a few other features that may lure users away from their current streaming services. Music Connect lets artists upload their songs, photos, and videos directly to Music and receive and respond to feedback from fans. It’s like a hybrid between a Facebook band page and Soundcloud.

You might also like Beats 1, a 24/7 live stream “radio station” of DJ-curated music that will feature interviews with artists and music news—this service is in addition to the preexisting genre-based iTunes Radio stations, which will continue broadcasting. Complementing the radio offerings are a variety of “expert”-curated playlists (similar to Songza) with titles such as “Driving to the Big Game” or “The Evolution of Black Music,” which you can listen to or save to your own collection of playlists.

Beats 1 is built into Apple Music and will feature DJ-curated music, as well as interviews and music news.

But for all that Apple Music has to offer, a number of unanswered questions might make or break the service for some users. First off, what third-party support will it have? For example, will it work with wireless home audio systems like Sonos? Second, what will the bitrate be? iTunes purchases are currently encoded at 256 kbps, which is a lower bitrate than the 320-kbps highest-quality streams found on Rdio and Spotify’s similarly priced $10/month Premium tiers, let alone the CD-quality streams available at the $20 tier on Deezer and Tidal. That said, most people won’t be able to tell the difference on a typical phone/headphones or computer-speaker setup.

Ultimately, these are niggles in what appears to be an otherwise solid streaming offering. Many people on Twitter are eager to write off Apple Music as more of the same—in this case, though, that’s all Apple needs to offer, since most people haven’t even tried streaming music. As the BBC reports, Spotify—the most popular streaming service right now—has only 15 million paying subscribers. Compare that with 800 million iTunes users, and it’s not hard to predict that Music has a fighting chance. Furthermore, Spotify and its ilk won’t be the default option on millions of Apple devices around the world. If the runaway popular-by-default numbers of Apple Maps is any indication (Apple reports that Maps is used 3.5 times more frequently than the next most popular option), people like what’s already available to them so long as it’s good enough. We look forward to trying it out.

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